


a view of earth

by darcylindbergh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Astronaut AU, Falling In Love, Fluff, IN SPACE!, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10103801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: “Maybe it just says something about us that we had to leave the planet to find one another.”*Some things are inevitable.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours and I know exactly zero (0) things about astronauts, space, or the International Space Station. I hope this is fluffy enough that you'll forgive me anyway.

“Sherlock, come here. Come see this.”

John looks away from the window, over his shoulder to where Sherlock floats, trying to piece together some bit of circuitry. His hair is getting long again, perpetually wild in zero-g as the curls grow in, but John is loath to suggest he trim them down. They make Sherlock look—softer. John likes them.

There is so very little softness in space, after all. 

“I’m almost done here,” Sherlock says distractedly, a tiny line appearing high across the bridge of his nose. “It’s not as though I don’t know what it looks like.”  

John shakes his head with a knowing grin. “No, you’ll want to see this one. Promise.”

Sherlock looks up at that, and he must see something serious and eager in John’s face because he sighs and tucks his his tools and wires into a wall compartment, then unhooks his belt from the latch keeping him in place. He pulls himself close to the wall before pushing off it, propelling himself across the room toward John’s outstretched hand.

John wonders sometimes if Sherlock is as graceful back home as he is out here, and figures yes, he probably is. The few times he’d seen Sherlock on the ground, he’d worn tight shirts and dark suits with clean lines that made his legs look a mile long, and he’d positively swaggered. If John hadn’t known Sherlock was slated to join the ISS team only six months after John was scheduled to go up, he would’ve pegged him as more of a Secret Service type than a bloody astronaut.

But now they’re here, and together, and even in a t-shirt and track-pants with his mouth all pink where he’s been rubbing at it while he thinks over his circuitry project, John thinks Sherlock is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

And John, seeing as how he is in _space_ , has seen an awful lot of beautiful things.

Sherlock reaches out, and John catches his fingers in his own, pulling him in the rest of the way and wrapping one arm around his waist so he doesn’t float off. He taps on the viewport window. “Look.”

And there, hundreds of miles away, is Earth.

And there on Earth, miraculously clear of cloud cover for once, is a little thumbprint of an island: _home._

Sherlock blinks. “Oh,” he says, his voice quiet and full of wonder, and again: “Oh.”

“Yeah,” John agrees. “Don’t get to see it very often, do we?”

Sherlock has gone still against him, his breath slow and shallow in his chest as he stares down at the British Isles. At England, and if one tried very hard and used a bit of imagination, maybe even at the smudge of London.

John tips his head onto Sherlock’s shoulder, and Sherlock’s arm around his shoulders tightens briefly. It’s strangely reminiscent of a regular date back home, sitting on a rooftop and watching the world go by. “Do you miss it?” John asks after a moment.

Sherlock doesn’t answer right away. “I . . . I don’t know,” he finally says. “I miss parts of it. My flat. My violin. The—the hurriedness of it. It’s never still, never quiet, not really. You can get lost in it. You can’t get lost out here.” He looks down at John, nudges at his cheek a little with his nose before looking back out. “But I find that I don’t really need to get lost out here the way I used to at home. I don’t really want to get lost somewhere when I could be right here with you.”

John pecks a kiss to the side of Sherlock’s jaw. “That sounds more like you like me than that you like space,” he grins.

“You’re _in_ space,” Sherlock shrugs, as if that explains everything. “And my work is out here. The experiments. So much new information, all the time. Constantly surrounded by the unknown, and yet never feeling lost. Isn’t that what all people want?”

John looks down at the Earth and doesn’t know. He was never very good at knowing what other people wanted. “Maybe it just says something about us that we had to leave the planet to find one another.”

Sherlock looks back at him and nudges at his cheek again, and then whispers against, “Maybe it just says that we would always find one another, even if we left the planet.”

It takes John by surprise, to hear Sherlock say such a thing, such a romantic, earnest thing, and there’s nothing else for it. He turns in Sherlock’s hold and kisses him, kisses him properly, kisses him softly but with meaning, with purpose, with gentle sincerity. Kisses him and marvels at the odds of leaving the planet and throwing himself into the vacuum of dark, isolated space, and finding there the one person who looked at John and saw _light_.

He’d never thought love could be like this.

It had been both slow and fast in the beginning, the exhilarating extension of themselves growing one into the other, the uncertainty of what it all meant. Sherlock’s sense of curiosity pings off of John’s sense of adventure and back again, building each other up toward something greater than themselves, rekindling that same excitement for exploration and potential that had driven John toward the stars to begin with. There had been tension, and flirting, and wondering, culminating into one unbearably gentle kiss as the sun set over the horizon of the planet below.

And now: this. The two of them, together. John loves Sherlock with laughter and affection and not a little awe, and Sherlock loves him back so wholly and completely, and yet a little shyly, as if he is still trying to get his balance back from the moment he’d come aboard the space station and saw John there, waiting to welcome the new team. Their eyes had met, and suddenly John had known that he wasn’t there as an astronaut waiting for a new team member; he was there as John Watson, waiting for Sherlock Holmes. 

Like Sherlock said: simple inevitability. A fixed fact of the universe, across space and time: they would find each other.

“What do you miss?” Sherlock asks, giving John one more kiss before looking back out the viewport. “About home?”

“There are some things, sure,” John says, after a moment. “Conveniences. Things you take for granted, like a walk in the park or having a lie-in. But do I really miss those things, in the sense that I’m looking forward to getting back to them?” He shrugs. “I don’t think there’s anything that I’m excited to _get back_ to.”

Sherlock tilts his head to rest against John’s. “What are you excited for, then?”

“Going _forward_. You know? What comes next. The way everything will be different now.” He hesitates before going on—they haven’t discussed it at all—but decides it’s worth the risk. “Everything that will be different with you.”

Next to him, Sherlock stiffens briefly in surprise, but then relaxes fully against John’s side, melting into him with a satisfied sigh. For a while, it’s quiet, just the hum of the space station around them and the silence of space beyond, and John thinks about all the things about home that will be different with Sherlock. Going to dinner at all the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants Sherlock tells stories about. Walking along the edge of the Thames, laughing with hands entwined and stopping just out of reach of the lamps to kiss in the shadows. Cosying up on the sofa with popcorn and a couple of beers, watching all the Bond films Sherlock hasn’t seen, and then spreading him out, gloriously naked and waiting against the white sheets of their bed, taking the time they couldn’t afford out in space, loving every inch of Sherlock as gently and tenderly as he deserved.

“I’ve got a nice little place in central London,” Sherlock says, after a few long minutes. He almost sounds absent-minded, but John can hear the cautiousness behind it. “Together we’d certainly be able to afford it.”

“You asking me home, Sherlock Holmes?” John teases. He kisses Sherlock’s cheek, which turns a delicate pink.

“If you’re up for it.” He clears his throat and dips his head, endearingly bashful. “Just so you know. I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end.” He shrugs and doesn’t meet John’s eye. “There are two bedrooms.”

Something warm and golden floods into John’s chest at the shyness of it, brilliantly affectionate, and he uses a finger to tip Sherlock’s face back up so he can kiss him properly once more. “I don’t think we’ll be needing two bedrooms, do you?” Sherlock’s flush deepens; a smile threatens at the corners of his mouth. “I love you,” John assures him. “I’m so in love with you. I can’t think of anywhere on Earth _or_ in space I’d rather be than with you.”

Sherlock’s lopsided grin spills across his face, and John thinks he could light up the solar system, looking like that. “You’re not bad yourself,” Sherlock allows, giggling. “Even if you are an incorrigible romantic.”

John giggles back. “You love me too,” he declares.

“I do.” Sherlock says, and he grows a little serious behind his smile. “I really, really do. So come home with me, when we go back. Let’s just . . . be together, wherever we are.”

John nods, and laughs again with happiness, and says, “Yes,” like a promise against Sherlock’s mouth. And then, because he can, John kisses him again, and again, and again. 

And hundreds of miles below, London drifts into the horizon and the world goes on, spinning forward. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr!](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)


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